The Oregon League of Minority Voters has announced its intention to create a college scholarship program for white students who will study race relations. Via the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Oregonian has the story. Promise King (what a name!), the executive director of the OLMV, said it bothered him when he went to diversity meetings and found no white people. "We're preaching to ourselves," he said. Nicole Maher, who leads the Native American Youth Family Center in Portland, agreed:
"Promise's group should not just focus on whites being good allies but ensuring those people use their power and influence to give up their spot for a person of color," she said. "The most courageous thing a white ally can do is truly share power."
And Kendall Clawson, executive director of a Portland LGBT organization called the Q Center, said, "This is an interesting way of sort of taking the excuse away of 'I didn't know about that' or 'I'm not informed' or 'I've never experienced that.'" True, now white students in Oregon will have the opportunity to experience racial preferences in their favor. Racial preferences on behalf of minorities are intended for the improvement of justice, equality, and unity, but they inevitably cause injustice, inequality, and division. The same goes for racial preferences on behalf of whites. Scholarships reserved for students of certain races are founded in the foolish "diversity" notion that membership in various identity groups is how people should define themselves. Even the Oregonian article adopts this idea, referring to Kendall Clawson as "a self-described middle-class African American." Are these outward aspects of being human what really define us? If Promise King and the Oregon League of Minority Voters really want to promote "respect for all individuals," as they say on their website, they should start by respecting human equality.
